


A Crying God

by Flightless_Bird



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Desert Bluffs, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, Is that how you spell the shauns’ names?, Poor Vanessa, Pre-Strex Kevin, Re-Education, So many tags, Strex Kevin, StrexCorp Synernists Inc. - Freeform, Strex’s takeover, The Smiling God - Freeform, Violence, but just a tiny bit at the end, eldritch kevin, kevin is not human, kinda graphic but not really, mentions of torture, more implied violence, she was a good intern, warning for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 08:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13520775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightless_Bird/pseuds/Flightless_Bird
Summary: “Lauren’s smile was so tight, not reaching that cold, empty space in her eyes. He remembered the exact tone of her voice and movement of her lips when she said, “oh, I almost forgot. Your intern has offered to help redecorate your recording booth.”—Before Strex, they believed in him, rather than the Smiling one.





	A Crying God

**Author's Note:**

> The result of a few headcanons that I’ve been thinking about and the need for some angst, I guess. I love Kevin, he deserves better. 
> 
> One headcanon that might not be fully understood: StrexPets are mostly small little balls of fur, but can morph into huge, almost humanoid forms, with no eyes and long, taloned arms. Hence, why they can do what they do. 
> 
> Hope ya like it! c:

Kevin remembered that they had beaten him down first.

  
They didn’t know quite what he was, but they knew that he had power. They knew he was a Voice and that Voices could shift and change, depending on what was around them, and like that, Kevin could too.

  
They saw it when they tried to force their way through the doors the first time and were met with a seething eldritch horror, all burning eyes and tentacles of black ink, claws, teeth, Voice. They came better prepared next time. They came with fully-morphed StrexPets, six of them, and weapons, trucks. He would’ve held his own for far longer, but the rest of Desert Bluffs…they never came. They never helped. And the minute that StrexCorp had wrestled him to the ground and let the Pets find his eyes, he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer.

  
Talons raked into his face and he’d shrieked. A Voice without Sight, without access to that place in the deep that let him shift his body. He fizzled from from monster-like god to mere man in seconds, covered in blood that was as much his own as theirs.

  
It felt like something was left hollowed and blind, deep within the Earth, in him.

  
Then the Pets were beaten back and he was hauled up to his feet by several employees. He hadn’t bothered to fight back much by then. His leg was broken, and one arm had almost been completely torn apart by the StrexPets’ frenzy. They roughed him up a bit, but he didn’t let them pull another sound from him. He spat in their faces and his hatred was only worsened when Lauren came to him next. She’d patted his head and told him how much better he looked now, and how much more productive he was going to be once they’d finished their work with him.

  
“And you’ll be able to work with me in our new station!”

  
“Fuck you, Lauren.”

  
“The Smiling God will be so pleased by your worship.”

  
“Fuck him too.”

  
Lauren’s smile was so tight, not reaching that cold, empty space in her eyes. He remembered the exact tone of her voice and movement of her lips when she said, “oh, I almost forgot. Your intern has offered to help redecorate your recording booth.”

  
A few employees dragged a StrexPet to the doors of the station and Kevin _fought_. He clawed, kicked, punched, bit, lashed out with everything he had left in his broken, human body. It took five Strex workers to beat and hold him back, lunging desperately for the station doors as the other monsters disappeared inside.

  
The sounds started then. Sounds that stayed with him at night and between doses of Strexmeds for years.

  
They left the Shauns’ alone, locked up in a storage area; they were to be Kevin’s first job after his re-education. But they wrenched his intern out by her hair and to his booth. He’d later read in a StrexCorp report of the incident that she’d actually wounded two badly, breaking bones in her struggle. But they’d won anyway. They threw her into his booth with the Pet and locked the door.

  
And then they put it on air.

  
The entirety of Desert Bluffs listened as a StrexPet ripped Vanessa to pieces. The noises it made were unlike anything that they had ever heard, the noises _she_ made.

  
Kevin screamed. They’d wanted his voice and he let them have it, until it was ragged, and raw, and broke around every syllable of her name. When it could no longer rip itself from him, it clawed out in sobs. He was shaking harder than he could remember, parts of him flickering and glitching at his edges. His legs gave out. The desert fell into silence around them. The wind ceased, the bugs quieted, and the birds made no noise. There was nothing but the deep, ceaseless quiet of the void, as though the universe itself mourned with the crying god.

  
They let him go to her. They gave him one minute, to see the wreck of her and then take him away with that image burned into his mind with the light of the Smiling God.

  
He’d fallen to his knees next to her, everything glistening with her blood, with parts of her. How she was still alive, he never knew. But she was, clinging to a tiny string, painted crimson. He gathered her in his arms as gently as he could, smoothed back the remains of her matted hair. Through the gashes and blood, he saw her eyes, dark brown, gazing up at him.

  
His voice tripped hoarsely out of him: “ _Vanessa_.”

  
“It’s okay,” she whispered around a wet rattling in her chest. “It’ll be okay.”

  
“No, it won’t.” His entire body ached, his soul ached somewhere deep inside with the knowledge of what had happened. “We were supposed to win,” he breathed shakily. “It wasn’t going to be like this.”

  
“Maybe we will be…someday. Maybe this has to happen first.”

  
“But you won’t be there.”

  
“Yes, I will. In—some way.”

  
“Vee, I’m so so—”

  
“It’s okay, Kevin. It’s not your fault.”

  
Kevin sobbed again, because it was. He wasn’t strong enough and he led them all to believe that victory would come and he’d _lied_. Now Strex would take them all and there wasn’t even the tiniest comfort in knowing that this hell they’d twist him into would have Vanessa in it.

  
His tears dripped onto Vanessa’s face and left streaks in her blood. “They’ll make me into something else,” he whispered, letting that secret out, that thing that terrified him more than anything else. “They won’t let me kill myself, Vanessa. I’m going to help them destroy everything.”

  
“It won’t…be you,” she managed. Her hand twitched and he slipped his fingers into hers. “But I know that there’ll be—something there. Someday, you’ll find yourself again.”

  
“How do you know?” he asked quietly, aware of them waiting, lingering by the door as they sensed her giving out.

  
Vanessa smiled. “Because I’ll be with you. And none of their re-education will make me let you go.”

  
Not wanting them to hear, Kevin lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. He whispered there, softly, to let her feel the words. “I love you.” Her fingertip stroked his cheekbone.

  
She was gone.

  
They took him then. And every unbroken part of him was crushed, electrocuted, drowned, shredded open and stitched back together. They made sure he’d never use his Sight again. They erased all happy memories of his beloved little town and twisted them into darkness before the Smiling God. And in the end, when they asked again for his Voice, he let them take it. He belonged to StrexCorp. His was theirs now.

  
Sometimes, during coherent moments of his torture, he remembered what Vanessa had said, about letting him go. As though, even though she was dead, it would be up to her to keep this part of him safe. But he forgot about this odd statement soon enough, when the next round of surgery came.

-x-x-x-

His first day on the job.

  
Kevin loved his station, and loved how Strex had redone it for him. He made sure to thank all of the old Shauns’ for their hard work, before he had to let them go. New station, new employees.

  
Except for one, of course.

She stayed.

  
But it didn’t hinder his productiveness and no one else ever noticed. So he never said a word. And when others mentioned the rumors of the station being haunted, he’d only smile and remind them that followers of the Smiling God joined His beautiful light when they faded.

  
Only little desert towns, with smaller desert gods, left ghosts behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, I always thought that if Night Vale had ghosts, Desert Bluffs might too. But only one stayed after Strex and only Kevin can see her. :3   
> Let me know if you enjoyed reading!


End file.
